The rocky, open, dramatically lighted terrain has been an artistic inspiration for the couple, now in their 70s, on excursions since 2004. They spend eight weeks roaming the remote lagoons and farmlands as well as the rugged shorelines and small fishing villages, lugging their hulking, 8-by-10-inch-view cameras until something calls to them visually. Then they work side by side, each capturing the landscape in large-format, black-and-white photographs \u2014 specifically, gelatin silver chloride contact prints, something of a lost art.
Their work \u2014 featured in more than 140 museums worldwide, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art , the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York \u2014 is on display this weekend at the Photo L. A. art fair.
Smith and Chamlee\u2019s images are closer to abstraction than landscape photography. Each picture is emotionally resonant, not necessarily a literal reflection of the subject but an expression of what inspired it \u2014 the geometric lines, shapes and shadows giving the image a new narrative.
\u201cI like to say we photograph space, not things,\u201d Smith says, adding that he and Chamlee feel a kinship with photographer Edward Weston.
\u201cWe just look and try to be open to new visual discoveries,\u201d Chamlee says, \u201cand you do that by exploring and just responding when it feels right. Because every day is different, the light is different. That low arc of the sun makes magical, arctic light.\u201d
Stateside, the couple is just as prolific. Chamlee is also a painter who recently has been combining sumi ink drawings with watercolors. She spent a year documenting a Bucks County woman\u2019s idiosyncratic holiday lawn decorations. Smith photographed inmates in solitary confinement at Maricopa County 4th Avenue Jail in Phoenix. One portrait was exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D. C., as part of the 2009 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. They\u2019ve also traveled the globe, making photographs from southern Oregon to the Atchafalaya Basin in Louisiana to the Tuscan countryside.
But Iceland\u2019s natural and city landscapes are a hallmark of their joint photography practice.
\u201cIceland was for both of us a revelation \u2014 unexpected and beautiful and energizing and surreal,\u201d Chamlee says. \u201cThough we work in different ways, we both photograph things we feel deeply connected to, things we want to know on a more personal level just by being deeply observant and being with it, so we can respond to it. Iceland was just a great adventure.\u201d<\/p>\n